The pet fish spent money and revealed the owner’s credit card details to thousands of people during the live stream.
This unlikely event happened during an unusual experiment by a Japanese YouTuber who wanted to see if his fish could complete a video game by itself.
Using webcams pointed at their fish tanks and motion-tracking software to monitor their movements and translate them into button inputs, Mutekimaru sets up his fish to play the latest Pokemon title nintendo change.
The fish operates the Nintendo Switch by swimming through a grid marked with buttons. Image: Invincible Pill Channel/YouTube
Footage shows them swimming across a grid mapped onto the bowl, with each square labeled with commands on the Switch controller.
The fish successfully completed the previous game in the series – in just over 3,000 hours.
This time around, they had over 1,100 hours of play when the game crashed, which is perhaps not surprising considering the latest Pokemon game Being criticized is prone to bugs.
As it happened, Mudimaru was away from his streaming setup—while the Switch continued to accept button commands from the fish.
Eventually, they managed to navigate to the console’s store.
More like this:
Ronaldo’s FIFA rating hits 16-year low
From there, the fish managed to add 500 yen (£3.10) to Mutekimaru’s account using a credit card stored on his Switch – and exposed the card details to anyone watching.
The fish also triggered a download from the store, causing PayPal to send its owner a confirmation email and change their account name.
Nintendo appears to be sympathetic to the situation, as Mutekimaru said the company agreed to refund the money.
Sky News has contacted Nintendo for comment.